Spectrum offers you the same cable TV service but through the internet

For those who have decided not to pay hundreds of dollars a year for cable networks, but still subscribe to Spectrum for the Internet, the company has a deal for you. It wants to bring you cable, packaged as a streaming service that costs $14.99 a month, as a deal to keep cable relevant users when there are more alternatives to cable now than ever before.

The “streaming service” is called Spectrum TV Essentials and includes popular cable networks such as the Weather Channel, Food Network, Nickelodeon, and MTV. Unlike other streaming services that offer movies and individual shows, TV Essentials basically takes a dozen channels from Spectrum and offers them to its Internet subscribers. These are the channels that the cable company already offers in its standard packages, albeit at much higher prices. In fact, it's so familiar that it sounds like the on-demand plan that Spectrum sales representatives quietly offered customers in 2018 to lure them back to cable.

"We believe that a high-quality, low-priced option for Internet subscribers is very important," Viacom President and CEO Bob Bakish said in a press release.

In particular, TV Essentials bypasses HBO, which has traditionally been an additional purchase to cable packages and now has its own streaming service, HBO Now, with shows like Game of Thrones and Insecure.

Although TV Essentials doesn't have the premium original content of an HBO Now or Netflix subscription, it tries to make up for it by being compatible with most platforms. You can access TV Essentials through the Spectrum TV app on iOS and Android. It's also available on Roku, Apple TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV, and on the desktop. Unlike the Netflix and HBO apps, it doesn't seem like you can download TV Essentials shows to watch later offline, but the app is supposed to allow you to browse by category or channel and also set parental controls. Moreover, many users have discovered a way how to bypass Spectrum cable box and watch their TV shows and series directly from an installed on a streaming device.

According to the press release, it appears that TV Essentials will be exclusive to Spectrum Internet users "on the charter footprint." Charter clarified that Spectrum Internet users could also access the subscription service on phones and tablets outside the home, even when they are not connected to Spectrum Wi-Fi.